Philip Morrison

“Hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe, and it is combustible.”

“The extension of life is not the important thing. To extend the depth and the breadth of life is the important thing.”

“If the beings of a hypothetical, distant planet were to television pictures of our world, they would be struck by the remarkable fact that our planet is teeming with life.”

“The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is, in a sense, a search for ourselves.”

“Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.”

“The astronomical evidence seems to suggest that the universe is not eternal, that it had a beginning perhaps ten billion years ago.”

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”

“SETI is a mirror, a mirror that can show us ourselves from a new perspective.”

“The flow of energy through a system acts to organize that system.”

“What is remarkable is that we can understand the universe.”

“Science is an organized body of knowledge, but it's also a process.”